- Peru's ENFEN climate panel now puts the odds of an "extraordinary" Niño Costero at 62% between September 2026 and January 2027, with the sharpest heat expected in November and December.
- Farm group Conveagro warns that up to 2.2 million hectares — roughly a fifth to a third of Peru's farmland — are at risk, with food-production estimates ranging from 40% to 50% depending on which Conveagro statement is cited.
- The Central Reserve Bank expects a record $5.515 billion in remittances for 2026, but growth has cooled to just 1.7% in the first half of the year, partly because of a new 1% U.S. federal tax on cash transfers.
- Peru's north-central anchovy fleet had its entire first 2026 season canceled in August after months of unusually warm water kept the fish out of reach.
Peru is bracing for two shocks at once. Government scientists say the ocean off its coast is heating up fast enough to trigger a rare "extraordinary" El Niño, right as the flow of money from relatives working in the United States — the financial cushion millions of households lean on — loses momentum.
A forecast that keeps getting worse
In its August 30 bulletin, Peru's multi-agency El Niño commission, known by the acronym ENFEN, raised its estimate to a 62% chance that the Niño Costero reaches "extraordinary" strength in the Niño 1+2 zone off the northern and central coast between this September and next January, with the hottest stretch of ocean expected around November and December. The commission's next update is due September 14.
The heat is already showing up on land. On July 30, Peru's weather service issued a red-level alert — its highest — covering the entire coastline from Tumbes to Tacna, with the north hitting as high as 36°C in the dead of what should be winter. "That red level applies to the coastal strip," meteorologist David Garay told the regional broadcaster RCR, explaining that the warming sea is what pushes coastal air temperatures higher. Days later, an ENFEN spokesperson told the state news agency that sea-surface readings in some zones were running as much as 5.4°C above their historical average, a gap the commission expects to persist into 2027.
Farms squeezed between flood and drought
For growers, the danger isn't just heat — it's whiplash between too much water and too little. The farm lobby Conveagro has estimated more than $3 billion in losses and warned that national food output could fall by as much as 50%, hitting staples like potatoes, rice, beans and fruit. Separately, the group has put the area at risk at 20% to 30% of the country's farmland — close to 2.2 million hectares.
Those aren't the only numbers in circulation. In a separate radio interview the same week, Conveagro president Anaximandro Rojas offered a lower figure for food specifically — "food production will drop by 40%, and fishing by 70%," he said — even as the outlet's own headline cited a 60% figure that doesn't appear to match either number in his quote. Conveagro hasn't reconciled the discrepancy publicly, so both the 40% and 50% estimates are worth treating as informed projections rather than a single confirmed figure.
The stakes are high because small and mid-sized farms, not large agro-exporters, put most food on Peruvian tables. Family farming accounts for roughly 70% of what Peruvians eat day to day, according to reporting that also noted the 2017 Niño Costero — a much smaller event than the one now forecast — still destroyed about 51,000 hectares and cost the farm sector some $380 million.
Export crops are already feeling it too. In Piura, mango output fell 6% between January and May, economist Ana Lucía del Río of the Peruvian Economic Institute (IPE) said, warning that farm jobs in the north are on the line and that the institute's earlier estimate of a 0.8-point hit to GDP growth through 2027 could prove too conservative given how the outlook has darkened since.
The ocean is pulling back from fishers too
The fishing fleet has already paid a price. Peru's Production Ministry formally closed the first 2026 anchovy season in the north-central zone in August, months after suspending it in June, when scientific surveys from the Marine Institute (IMARPE) found the warm water had scattered the stock into deeper, cooler pockets and left the catch dominated by undersized juveniles unfit for harvest.
What it means for Peruvian families in the U.S.
Roughly 3.5 million Peruvians live abroad, and nearly a third of them — 30.4% — are in the United States, more than double the share in Spain, the next-largest destination. Their transfers home are Peru's single biggest source of remittances, and the Central Reserve Bank (BCRP) expects that flow to hit a record $5.515 billion in 2026.
The momentum behind that record has faded, though. Remittances jumped 11.7% in 2025, the BCRP's own year-end tally showed, but growth slowed to just 1.7% for the first half of 2026, with the April-June quarter actually shrinking year over year. The central bank has linked part of that cooling to tighter U.S. immigration enforcement and to a new federal tax.
Since January 1, a provision inside the sweeping tax-and-spending law known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act has charged a 1% federal tax on remittances sent as cash, money orders or cashier's checks. Transfers made from a U.S. bank account or with a U.S.-issued debit or credit card are exempt. Researchers cited by Gestión estimate the levy could shrink overall U.S.-originated remittance volume by around 1.6%, on top of the roughly 6% migrants already pay in transfer fees.
For families split between the two countries, the pressure is arriving from both directions at once: El Niño threatens to push up the price of potatoes, onions and other kitchen staples in Peru, while sending money north to south costs a little more too — unless it's routed through a bank account or card rather than paid in cash.
